DEV541: Secure Coding in Java/JEE: Developing Defensible Applications

The content and more importantly the instructors presentation of it was exactly what I was looking for to improve my knowledge.

Gilbert Lappano, Northrop Grumman

The Difference between Good and Great Programmers

Great programmers have traditionally distinguished themselves by the elegance, effectiveness, and reliability of their code. That's still true, but elegance, effectiveness, and reliability have now been joined by security. Major financial institutions and government agencies have informed their internal development teams and outsourcers that programmers must demonstrate mastery of secure coding skills and knowledge through reliable third-party testing or lose their right to work on assignments for those organizations. More software buyers are joining the movement every week.

Such buyer and management demands create an immediate response from programmers, "Where can I learn what is meant by secure coding?" This unique SANS course allows you to bone up on the skills and knowledge required to prevent your applications from getting hacked.

What Does the Course Cover?

This is a comprehensive course covering a huge set of skills and knowledge. It's not a high-level theory course. It's about real programming. In this course you will examine actual code, work with real tools, build applications, and gain confidence in the resources you need for the journey to improving the security of Java applications.

Rather than teaching students to use a set of tools, we're teaching students concepts of secure programming. This involves looking at a specific piece of code, identifying a security flaw, and implementing a fix for flaws found on the Top 10 and CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors.

The class culminates in a Secure Development Challenge where you perform a security review of a real-world open source application. You will conduct a code review, perform security testing to actually exploit real vulnerabilities, and finally, using the secure coding techniques that you have learned in class, implement fixes for these issues.

Course Syllabus

DEV541.1: Data Validation

Overview

Improper data validation is the root cause of the most prevalent web application vulnerabilities today. Cross Site Scripting (XSS) has become the most widely reported issue with web applications. It has reached the point where the Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) estimates that over 80% of the web sites on the Internet are vulnerable to this attack.

Beginning on the first day, you will learn about some of the most prevalent web applications vulnerabilities such as XSS, CSRF, SQL Injection, HTTP Response Splitting, and Parameter Manipulation. You will see how to spot some of these issues and how to recreate them in a running application. Then you will use a variety of methods to actually fix these vulnerabilities in your Java code.

The course is full of hands on exercises where you can apply practical data validation techniques that you can use to prevent common attacks.

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

Web Application Attacks

Cross Site Scripting

Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

SQL Injection

HTTP Response Splitting

Parameter Manipulation

Directory Traversal

Web Application Proxy

Using Paros

Validation Concerns

Character Encoding

Input Validation

Output Encoding

Blacklisting & Whitelisting

Validation Techniques

Regular Expressions

Servlet Filters

HTML Encoding

Struts Validation

CAPTCHA

Prepared Statements

Stored Procedures

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP)

DEV541.2: Authentication, Session Management, and Access Control

Overview

Broken authentication and session management are common issues that can compromise the integrity of your system. Weak authentication protections can allow an attacker to expose your most sensitive secrets: your data! You will learn about these vulnerabilities and what you can do to design and code stronger authentication protections from the start. You will learn how to use JEE Container Based Authentication and setup both Basic and Form Based Authentication. You will also learn about Spring Security, which is the popular security system for Spring.

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

Authentication Attacks

Brute force attacks

Weak password storage

Password reset

Secret questions

Weak session management

Authentication

JEE Container Based Authentication

Basic Authentication

Form Based Authentication

Client certificates

Account lockout

Password policy

Spring Security

Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS)

Protecting Sessions

Using SSL

Session hijacking

Session fixation

Authorization

JEE Container Based Authorization

Declarative access control

Programmatic access control

Access control bypass

JSR 250 annotations

Spring Security annotations

Unvalidated redirects and forwards

DEV541.3: Java Language and Security APIs

Overview

Java is the language of choice for the development of many mission critical applications. As such, it is vital to understand the security features and implications of using the Java language itself and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Through numerous hands-on exercises you will learn about the Security Manager, how code privileges are managed, and how to sign jar files. You will also learn about Exception handling and try/catch/finally blocks as well as the importance of logging. With hands-on exercises you will also write code to encrypt both data in transit and data at rest using the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) and the Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) as well as String immutability, integer and double overflows, and about numerous Java language features that you should consider while writing secure code.

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

Java Security Manager

Permissions

Policy file

Jar signing

Error Handling

Exceptions

Using try/catch/finally

Logging

Logging frameworks

ESAPI logging

Encryption

Java Secure Sockets Extension (JSSE)

Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA)

Class Security

Accessibility modifiers

Inner classes

Strings

Immutability

String handling

Integer and Double Overflows

Race Conditions

Synchronization

Collections

Singletons

DEV541.4: Secure Development Challenge

Overview

Using what you have learned about Web application vulnerabilities, you will conduct a security review of a real-world open source application. You will see first hand how to integrate security in your software development life cycle (SDLC) by first conducting a code review of a large, widely used open source application. Once you have identified various vulnerabilities in the code itself you will then perform security testing and actually exploit these weaknesses. Once they have been exploited you will then fix them using the secure coding techniques you have learned in class.

The Secure Development Challenge introduces you to what is needed in a Secure SDLC and shows you how to do it first hand!

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

Security and the SDLC

Conducting a secure code review

Manual code review

Using a static analysis tool

Using FindBugs

Integrating code review into the SDLC

Security Testing

Exploiting XSS, CSRF, and SQL Injection

Secure Coding

Fixing weaknesses in a running application

Additional Information

Laptop Required

Laptop with administrative level access

7 GB available hard drive space

2 GB RAM or higher

DVD drive (minimum 16x recommended)

x86 compatible 2Ghz CPU minimum or higher

VMWare

You will use VMware to perform exercises in class. You must have a

working copy of one of the following installed on your system prior to

coming to class:

VMware Player 4.0 or later

VMware Workstation 8.0 or later

VMware Fusion 4.0 or later for Mac OS X

VMware Player can be downloaded for free. Alternatively, if you want a

If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact laptop_prep@sans.org.

Who Should Attend

This course is ideal for:

Developers who want to build more secure applications

Java EE programmers

Software engineers

Software architects

This class is focused specifically on software development but is accessible enough for anyone who's comfortable working with code and has an interest in understanding the developer's perspective including:

Application security auditors

Technical project managers

Senior software QA specialists

Penetration testers who want a deeper understanding of target applications or who want to provide more detailed vulnerability remediation options

Prerequisites

Students should have at least one year's experience working with the JEE platform and should have thorough knowledge of Java language and Web technology.

Author Statement

Author Statement

After having taught application security to hundreds of developers, I've learned what works in teaching this important subject. Developers need to be intellectually challenged with exercises; they need a variety of solutions they can apply to a single problem in different scenarios. By giving our students concrete examples of applications they can take back with them, class attendees will be armed with strong techniques that can be applied to both current and future projects. By knowing how various Web application attacks work, how common programming errors are made, and how to prevent them, developers will have the tools necessary to prevent a large number of application attacks. Take part in this groundbreaking class and arm yourself with the knowledge to protect your Java applications.